Part I: Where I Started, How I Got Here

I’m occasionally asked what I believe politically, and answering is always frustrating. Conservatives think I’m a Liberal. Democrats assume I’m one of them, although they don’t understand why I can’t be more realistic.

Too many people want an easy label, a bumper sticker, a three-word answer to a million-library question. I can’t give them what they’re looking for, and wouldn’t even if I could.

The best I can do is write it all down.

I grew up in the working-class South of the 1960s and ’70s. The word for Black people began with “n,” and it was as normal as “dog” or “bicycle.”  Women were second-class citizens because the Bible said so. We’d heard of Mexicans, but nobody had actually seen one. Homosexuals were mocked…if they were lucky. And transgender—that didn’t even exist.

So I started life very conservative. It was the only language spoken.

I voted for Reagan twice and for Bush the Elder once. As I awakened (a little, not a lot), I convinced myself that Bill Clinton represented something new and morally better. It took me a few years to realize that his Third Way was the Second Way with slicker marketing.

I began life captive to ideology, but the chains chafed. As I lived and grew, I noticed how people were actually treated (and which people were doing the treating). I learned firsthand about the gap between America’s mythology and its machinery. I reflected deeply on the contradictions in what I’d been taught (because I was raised in an environment that oscillated wildly between banal hatred and heartbreaking kindness). And I studied the systems that shape our culture.

I worked. I made mistakes. I got lots of book learning. I moved around and met new people from different places and listened to their perspectives. I thought. I wrote. I made more mistakes. Lather, rinse, repeat.

At every turn, new and challenging ideas confronted me, and I argued with every single one of them. I lost most of those arguments, although sometimes it took me years, even decades, to realize it. At some point along the way, I realized most of what I knew resulted from losing arguments.

I never stopped watching. I never stopped questioning.

I never stepped off the road, and here I am, still walking. It goes on forever, but truthfully, I don’t know how many miles I have left. So I thought I’d pause for a second to write some things down so they won’t be lost.

Tomorrow: Principles, Ethics, Imperatives…